We know very little about how to increase the safety and wellbeing of mothers who experience intimate partner violence. A good deal of the research in this field focuses on treatments delivered by health professionals, but this cluster randomised trial from Melbourne Australia looked at the impact that non-professional mentor support can have in reducing intimate partner violence and depression in pregnant and recent mothers experiencing, or at risk of violence.

The trial was based in 106 primary care clinics. Sixty-three of the participating clinics referred 215 eligible culturally and linguistically diverse women between January 2006 and December 2007:

113 received the intervention (standard clinical care plus 12 months of weekly home visiting from trained and supervised local mothers, offering non-professional befriending, advocacy, parenting support and referrals)

61 received the comparison treatment (standard clinical care)

133 (76.4%) women (90 in the intervention group and 43 in the comparison group) completed follow-up at 12 months

The main outcomes were intimate partner violence measured by the Composite Abuse Scale and depression measured by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Secondary measures included wellbeing (SF-36), parenting stress (PSI-SF) and social support (MOS-SF) at baseline and follow-up. An intention-to-treat analysis was conducted using multivariable logistic regression and propensity scoring. The researchers justified this approach by saying:

Due to an imbalance in the numbers of women recruited in the two arms of the trial, a propensity score (PS) analysis was also undertaken to balance the arms for potential confounding from possible selection bias.

Clinicians and researchers were not blinded to the treatments given as the mentoring intervention was part of standard primary care. The researchers recognised that this was a weakness in their methodology.

André Tomlin is an Information Scientist with 20 years experience working in evidence-based healthcare. He's worked in the NHS, for Oxford University and since 2002 as Managing Director of Minervation Ltd, a consultancy company who do clever digital stuff for charities, universities and the public sector. Most recently André has been the driving force behind the Mental Elf and the National Elf Service; an innovative digital platform that helps professionals keep up to date with simple, clear and engaging summaries of evidence-based research. André is a Trustee at the Centre for Mental Health and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London Division of Psychiatry. He lives in Bristol with his wife, dog and three little elflings.